Overview

We met Mireya Barroso when she started her entrepreneurship at one of those networking events you can find in your local city. When Sugar Rush founder was starting her business had a “contact only” site made abroad, great design but no consistency with the information displayed, she didn’t even own the website (she had no idea). After a year of starting her project, she decided to take her business away from home, and she rented a commercial space, bare-bones.

We planned on starting to help Mireya with Sugar Rush a long time ago, but there was always something delaying it, until the perfect time arrived. Sugar Rush branding needs suddenly went from digital to physical and digital.

The Challenge

• The only real difficulty with the website was not exporting it or starting from zero; it was recovering the domain or starting with a new one.
• Her website was not a funnel; it didn’t have any SEO, nothing to capture visitors’ emails, and no option to place online orders.
• A new store with a lot of work ahead for an entrepreneur, mother of 2 beautiful kids, she has a lot of support from her husband, but he is busy with his own business.

Our Approach

The agency that developed the first website didn’t want to respond, they knew Mireya wanted to change providers. After a couple of months were lucky enough to recover the domain when it expired. We set a hosting account for her on BlueHost.com, selecting the most appropriate plan and features. Now, Sugar Rush has a branded email address instead of a @Gmail address.

By the time we started the new website design from scratch, Sugar Rush had a new logo and branding, so we took that as a guideline to create the website. Can’t take credit for that, kudos to her graphic designer. When we had a decent base for the website, we were not ready for the e-commerce part. They were in the process of filtering what they wanted to sell as online orders, and also coming up with new product ideas, so they asked us to take a small pause and help them with an urgency: the physical store!

Our Approach

We were playing with a limited budget, so our plan was to create a professional base to keep building on top of that gradually. A carpenter created a counter for them, and a wall to divide the store from the kitchen. That’s where we took over.

• Ceilings: We gave them the idea of bringing down the ceiling for the store area, because the industrial ceiling was several feet high and we had to bring down the attention, so that visitors’ eyes can stay in the store. This was the final collaboration with the carpenter, he took the design/idea and created something somewhat similar. We ended up correcting some details and painting the wooden beams. On top of the wooden beams, one of our designers put together a canvas (fabric tarp) to give it a bohemian look, while also hiding the industrial ceiling for good.
• Lights: The idea of having simple Edison-style bulbs hanging from ropes was strong, so we went for that, several bulbs with different styles spread to make the light even, it looks welcoming.
• Painting: Mireya didn’t want creamy colors, not having another pink-colored cake store. She knew what colors to have in the store, and she was open and trusting our taste on how to apply those colors: we gave a concrete effect on the left wall. The front wall with a dark gray color, right wall stayed white
• Brand decoration: We placed a hanger in the middle of the ‘concrete’ wall holding a bike she found, which was a fun restoration mini project. Searching for ideas, we made a square collage with words and phrases for the front wall, and another one with words and icons related to the bakery for the white wall, next to a neon sign that reads ‘sweet vibes only’. We also needed a strong message at the top of the front wall, we went for ‘House of the Best Millefeuille’.

Back on the eCommerce store, Mireya was guided on how to set up a platform to receive payments on the website or from links. We also helped with photography for the product line they wanted to start with, and now those are live at sugarrushbymb.com

Outcome

Sugar Rush now controls its domain, has a professional eCommerce website actively selling desserts online, and a beautiful take-out store where customers like to hang out because of the warm and relaxing atmosphere.